This exceptional documentary deals with the threat of ugly eco-politics in the most personal and risk-taking way—by following a group of brave Filipinos who volunteer to be ‘land defenders’ trying to protect the environment despite facing death threats from corrupt authorities.
A brave broadcast journalist warns of widespread nationalistic propaganda on television news in this powerful indictment of the sorry state of media and hate politics in India.
Cote makes the monotony of industrial labour poetic and hypnotic in this decent documentary exploration of what ‘work’ and ‘working’ means to the blue-collar fraternity.
‘Bride kidnapping’ continues to exist in the Hmong’s cultural tradition as this beautifully shot, eye-opening Vietnamese documentary shows us with raw authenticity and empathy the life of a 12-year-old Hmong girl pushed towards the fate of a prospective marriage.
Possibly the finest from Jia in recent years, this unexpectedly affecting documentary remarkably paints a portrait of China in the second half of the 20th century through the diverse oral histories of renowned literary figures.
Purportedly the first-ever documentary made (or more accurately, staged) in the history of the medium, Flaherty’s eye-opening and intimate look at an Inuit family living in a harsh and cold environment poses age-old questions of authenticity and truth.
Eighteen persons with personal connections to the political, social and cultural history of Shanghai share their recollections in Jia Zhangke’s somewhat stolid documentary, where the sum feels lesser than its parts.
It’s not easy to do a documentary about the life and work of arguably the world’s most extraordinary film composer, but Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore just about makes it work as it captures the sheer breadth and range of the maestro’s legacy.
Loznitsa expertly puts footage together from Leningrad in August 1991 as tens of thousands of nervous Russians filled the streets, with the political fate of their country hanging in the balance after communist hardliners staged what would become a failed coup d’état to revive the collapsing Soviet Union.
Despite the lack of narration to contextualise the historical footage, Loznitsa’s approach of letting the picture paint a thousand words convincingly shows us the abject reality of millions of Russians who suffered greatly during the devastating Leningrad blockade of WWII.
Eternality Tan 